Comedy, life, expat, just fun

Comma, Bitch.

As all my money has dwindled away, I have been looking for work online. Living where I do, with regular power outages, it’s difficult to commit to anything where I need to be online for certain scheduled times every day. The best solution is writing.

I have been to college a few times, so I understand writing essays, reports, detailed assignments and whatever else that entails. I’ve also taken several writing courses, mostly ‘creative writing’, all of which I enjoyed and a few I actually found helpful.

Writing for sites online is a different thing all together. When I first started I had no idea what I was doing but after a few tried, managed to get the hang of it. I had merely did an online for ‘working online’ and found a few sites that we free to join. These sites are set up for all interested parties to bid on projects and then you just wait and hope for the best.

I made a few mistakes along the way, the biggest was allowing the person wanting to hire me to contact me outside the site. The sites I was using – one I still am using- have their own pay system. This is because they take a percentage for the usage of the site. I didn’t understand that this wasn’t allowed, and the first few times I did it, it worked out fine. I got the money in my PayPal account

There was one person who hired me and wanted to contact through Skype. I did, and the first article I wrote, I sent through the freelance site. He actually ‘yelled’ at me, by yelled I mean he was furious that I was late and that ‘he didn’t work this way …’. I explained I sent the article, did he not check the messages?

I should have just cut my losses and went back to the site, but I didn’t know. Plus, they were offering a far higher wage than most, so I didn’t want to just throw it away. We carried on for a solid week, then I started to ask about money. He said he would pay the middle and end of the month.

I said that was fine, but as I had already done quite a bit of work, would he consider just paying for what he had received. He wouldn’t. He also kept sending me work. I said I would do it once I was paid.

Another aspect I found fishy was there was always someone there online on the Skype. Always. Sometimes the messages were very clear, sometimes they were clearly from someone who was not native English. I didn’t get paid and ended up having a big falling out with the freelance company. They also bawled me out and said I still owned them their take. What?

Last week I was accepted on a job from a woman who paid well and seemed to even have a sense of humour. I was wrong. I did an example writing, which she paid me for and then she critiqued it to the bone. She had a real thing about commas. She sent me a message back that frankly was all commas. It made me itch just reading it. She was really upset about double spaces between sentences and a long list of other things.

When she sent me the next assignment I told her to poke it up her ass, which she promptly did. The contract was ended and the payment made and then she had the gall to demand a review. I gave her a review.